


miles and miles in our bare feet

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe-Werewolves, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 02:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12181434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: Being a wolf is easy; it's the human side of things that's tricky.





	1. Full Moon: Qui-Gon

**Author's Note:**

> Arkhia gets all the credit on this one, for coming up with the prompt in the first place and also for putting up with my thousand and one highkey screaming messages while I wrote it. I hope you like teenage Luminara. Title borrowed (ish) from the Civil Wars.

The heat of the day is burning off, the late-September warmth dissipating into a fog that hovers between the dying leaves of the trees, the soft carpet of mud and sticks and worms blissfully cool under the hard pads of his paws, and he is running, running, running, as though if he pushes hard, fast enough, he can leave himself behind.

It is a month, always, to the next full moon, but some cycles feel longer than others, some days the burden of being human ( _acting_  human) a heavier weight.  Tomorrow morning he’ll be back in his shop, crafting artisanal furniture for the bedrooms and dining room tables and porches of Temple, North Carolina, answering endless phone calls on finishes and reclaimed woods and discount pricing, but tonight, tonight—

Tonight the mountains will run with wolves.  Tonight the sky will hear the desperate pounding feet of their prey, not strong enough to defeat them or swift enough to outrun them.  Tonight the moon will see the blood shed in her honor.

His feet barely hit the ground, four paws just barely touching down to earth as he pushes himself up the crest of the mountain, his heart expanding and contracting as though it, too, wishes to escape its confines, towards the full white glory of the moon, pale and perfect in the sky, calling him forward, calling him home.

He raises his nose to the canopy of black above, opening his throat to release a howl that echoes through the trees and to the sky, a cry so true and pure it is almost painful to express.  His ears twitch to hear the answering calls of the four others of the pack: the sleek black wolf who runs beside him, the smaller, russet wolf behind her, the slight gray wolf already sinking her jaws into a deer, the rumpled dark creature already finding his own path.  In their human home, in his other form, he finds expressing it difficult, but here, now, he howls for pride and loyalty and belonging, and hears it echoed back to him, in a language older and cleaner than words.

He runs, and he runs, and he runs, paws pounding against the earth, joining it, melding to it—

A fifth cry answers his.

The voice is small, but as one, the pack turns to track it.  His ears flatten; if the old pack has found them, after all this time…

The tang of remembered blood fills his mouth, his jaw aching to wrap around the throats of anyone who would hurt his pack.  He can feel his mate drawing closer; they will not take her alive, they will not take him alive…

His eyes sharpen the darkness into shapes, one shape: not a human, not a former packmate, but a puppy, its light fur damp, alone and shivering.  He can smell fear wafting off its tiny body, sharp and pungent as urine, and a quieter shame…

The green eyes of his mate meet his, and then his teeth are gently holding the puppy by the scruff of its fur, and they are running, running, not from joy, or hunger, but from humans, or hunters, or whoever would have left this child alone to die.


	2. Waning Gibbous: Tahl

“Morning, babe,” Qui-Gon mumbles, gently loosening her grip on him as he eases himself from underneath her and out of bed, the bed frame creaking as the mattress dips and rises beneath her.  She curls into a pillow, instead (they made it back to bed, this time, at least) and waits for the scent of strong black coffee, stirring her nose, to herald his return.  She sits up reluctantly to wrap long fingers around the warmth of the cup he offers.  Waking up the morning after a transformation always makes Qui-Gon feel vibrant and alive; it makes her feel hungover, and distinctly like murdering someone.  

One sip opens her eyes: Qui is dressed already, his big hands hunting in the pockets of his worn-out jeans for a thin leather band (where do they go?  Are the woods full of them?) with which to tie back his long cinnamon-colored hair, damp from the shower and tangling from vague and distracted attention.  A shallow scratch is already healing on the close-cropped beard of his jawline; any other marks (Tahl remembers a bite mark on his shoulder vividly) are hidden under his clothes.  Two sips make the world settle back into their familiar bedroom, and the third finds human speech.  A fourth brings back flashes of the full moon: moonlight dancing on darkened leaves, adrenaline flooding her veins, fresh blood on her lips, and…

“Am I wrong,” she asks, voice husky from last night’s howling, tapping a finger against the chipped mug, positive, as always, that she is not, “or did we bring home a baby last night?”

Qui-Gon tilts his head, a gesture so strongly reminiscent of his wolf form that it’s almost painful to behold.  Maybe it’s different for Obi-Wan, who wasn’t raised in a pack, or for Luminara and Quinlan, who grew up as equal citizens of two worlds, but Tahl will always be a wolf first, no matter what form she currently inhabits, no matter how many permission slips and W2s and grocery bills tie her to the human realm.  

“I believe we did,” he says at last.

Her hand reaches out automatically, the habit long ago ingrained into reflex, to find her wedding ring on the smooth wood of her night table and slip it back on, the weight of the silver cool and reassuring against her third finger.  There is dirt under her fingernails, and what, to her trained eye, is clearly blood.  Bear, she thinks, or possibly deer.  She glances at the clock: she has an hour to shower, dress, check on the kids, deal with this latest crisis (or at least leave Qui-Gon dealing with it) and be driving away for the library, where, if anybody asks, she will have to spin her traditional tale of her feigned love of gardening to explain her appearance.  It’s a good thing their house is a thirty minute stretch from town, or somebody might show up expecting the petunias and marigolds and pansies Tahl pretends to be so crazy about.

“I’ll do it,” she sighs, not because Qui-Gon won’t, but because she will do it better.  “The attic, right?”

“I think I saw the kids leading him up there after sunrise,” he offers.  “I should have checked, but…”

She doesn’t need him to tell her why; she remembers.  There is exactly one thing Tahl likes doing better as a human than as a wolf, and she hadn’t been about to let him leave the room last night.

She drains her cup, and grabs a shirt of Qui-Gon’s off the floor, and heads for the stairs, buttoning as she goes.

She smiles at Luminara, still in her pajamas at the kitchen table, sulking sleepily over her phone.  The kids aren’t related to them, except in the way that all wolves share bloodlines and a common ancestor, but Qui always likes to say that Lumi inherited her preternatural horror of rising before noon.  Tahl isn’t worried; Luminara hasn’t missed a day of school all year.  Unlike…

She raps an ungentle fist against the door of the room Quinlan and Obi-Wan share, her wedding ring sounding a metallic clink against the wood.  “Quin, if you miss any more days you’re going to have to repeat freshman year.”

“Don’t care,” mumbles a half-asleep teenage voice.

She does not have time for this; she never has time for this.  

“Fine, make high school last  _longer_ ,” she says, raising her voice to let this last part sink in.  

She hears water running in the bathroom as she passes up the stairs; Obi-Wan, no doubt already showered, dressed, and with next week’s homework done.  If there were a prize for Werewolf of the Year, Obi-Wan would win it, every time…but there isn’t, and Tahl will have to talk to him again about going a little easier on himself.  He can’t make himself human, no matter how many dishes he washes and extra-credit assignments he finishes, and he can’t make reconciling the dichotomy any less complicated by pretending it isn’t there.

But this morning she has a bigger problem.  A little door off the hallway leads to steep stairs; her eyes adjust to the darkness to pick out Lumi’s neatly made bed, and a nest of blankets on the floor, still shaped around a small form.  The fall and rise of the sheets and quilts suggests to her that he is only feigning sleep.

She wishes she’d brought her coffee with her.

“Good morning,” she offers.  

The blankets stir immediately, and a little boy with light hair and a round face appears, blue eyes wide.  Nine, she thinks, or maybe a small ten.

She crouches down, the unfinished wood of the attic floor rough beneath her bare feet.  “I’m Tahl,” she says.  “This is my house.  We brought you here last night.  Do you remember?”

A quick dip of his chin; almost a nod.

“Good,” she praises.  “That’s good.  Do you have a name?”

Her sense of smell is weaker as a human, but Tahl doesn’t need special senses to feel the waves of fear rising off this boy like a fever.  She waits.

“Anakin,” he says at last.

She smiles.  “It’s nice to meet you, Anakin.  Now,” she begins briskly, moving swiftly through a speech she has given before, “we brought you here to keep you safe, but this house is not a prison.  If you have family that you’ve been separated from, we will be more than happy to help you find them again.”

She remembers the shame and terror of the puppy last night, and she doubts that they’ll be let off the hook that easily, but reuniting a pack is less work than raising a child, and anyway it’s important to make the offer.

“They…left me,” he says finally, eyes on a worn patch of quilt in his hands.  “I started…waking up in weird places…and not remembering…and then I remembered, and…”

A heartbreaking story, but not a new one, not in this house.

She raises his chin with her hand, gently, to look him in the eye.  “I’m sorry that happened to you, Anakin,” she says.  “They shouldn’t have done that.”

“There’s something wrong with me,” he whispers.  “Something evil…”

“No,” she says firmly.  “You’re not evil, and there’s nothing wrong with you.  People like us—and it runs in families, but not always—are different, and sometimes that makes other people angry or afraid.  But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong to be the way we are.  It just means we have to stay safe, and take care of each other.”

A cautious nod.  “What…will happen to me now?”

Tahl gets to her feet.  “I have to get to work, but my husband—the big brown wolf,” she clarifies, “will get you breakfast and some clean clothes, and then you can go along to work with him for the day.  Tonight we’ll see about making up some papers so you can get started in school here.  What grade were you in, Anakin?”

“We didn’t go to regular school,” he says, a flush rising on round cheeks.  “My father said it was…dangerous and ungodly.”

Of course he did.  Of course this should be as difficult as possible.  

Tahl keeps her pessimism to herself, along with her opinions on the kind of religiosity that consists of leaving a child to die because of a little monthly inconvenience.  

“That’ll be no problem,” she promises smoothly.  “Obi-Wan—the red wolf—is an excellent tutor, and he’ll be happy to give you whatever help you need.”

Lumi, with the highest GPA in her sophomore class, would be equally capable, except that her no-nonsense manner and wide competitive streak have a tendency to intimidate.  A softer touch will be needed here.  It’ll be good for Obi-Wan to have a project, anyway; he gets into trouble with too much time to brood.

She holds out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Anakin takes it.  She squeezes his hand, and he lets her lead him downstairs, to light and warmth and the smell of sizzling bacon, to break it to her husband that they’re keeping the puppy, after all.


	3. Waning Crescent: Obi-Wan

Luminara slaps her lunch tray down opposite him on the cafeteria table like a gavel bringing a courtroom to order.  “I’m running for student council,” she says, black-lacquered fingers busy unwrapping a granola bar.  “I’ve just decided.”

“‘Vote for me or I’ll eat you’?” Obi-Wan suggests, prodding delicately at a soft brownish square the cafeteria is euphemistically calling ‘meatloaf’ with the very tip of his plastic fork.

Lumi rolls her bright blue eyes.  “Like I’m not better than all these people even as a human.”

“You have my vote,” Obi-Wan promises, even as he knows it would be better for him—for all of them—if she loses, or just gives up altogether.  Maybe it’s the year he spent hiding his monthly transformations from his parents after he'd been bitten, or the exactly two phone calls he’s received from them since being dumped in Nowheresville, North Carolina with a houseful of strangers three years ago, but he can’t help but feel that for werewolves, low-profile is the way to go.  

A soft voice breaks into the clamor of utensils and voices.  “If I could interrupt you all for just a moment…”

“Oh, good,” Lumi sighs.  “Our fearless leader has wisdom to impart.”

Obi-Wan can't say why, but he can't warm to Principal Palpatine, either.  Maybe it's the cowboy boots he wears, or the deer heads stuck on his office wall, or his son, Maul, a slight sophomore with a shaved head, who spends every free moment lifting weights and hardly ever speaks.  Obi-Wan doesn't get the feeling that they're missing much.  

“I want to inform you all,” Palpatine says, in a soft voice, “that the body of a bear and several deer have been found in the mountains outside of town.  Sheriff Organa has put out an official warning for a….mountain lion. Until the animal is caught, campers and hikers should stay away.  Leave the hunting to the professionals, like myself and,” he spares a proud look across the cafeteria, “my son.”

A cold shiver works its way down Obi-Wan’s spine.  Palpatine and Maul, out in his woods, armed to the teeth and hunting them all…

Palpatine pauses.  “I do hope you all take this seriously,” he says.  “There could be tragic consequences if anyone is so foolhardy as to attempt to catch this creature on your own…even if there is a reward posted.”

So it isn't just the principal Obi-Wan has to worry might put a bullet in him; it's every idiot in Temple High.  Looking around the room, he guesses that that includes most of the people in the room.  

“Cheer up,” Luminara whispers.  “Even if they shoot us, they won't use silver bullets, and we'll heal up just fine.”

“Not a disturbing notion at all,” he mutters.  “I can't imagine what was bothering me.”

He puts a lump of meatloaf in his mouth; it's cold.  

A hearty slap to his back almost sends his mouthful of meatloaf flying across the room.

“How many times,” Obi-Wan demands, knowing, without looking, the culprit responsible, “have I told you not to—”

“Hey, guys,” Quinlan says, dropping into a chair beside Obi-Wan, propping a booted foot up on the table beside Obi-Wan’s carton of chocolate milk, “how’s life at Temple High?”

“You would know,” Obi-Wan points out, “if you attended more than just lunch.”

Quinlan feigns hurt.  “I showed up for a whole class today.”

Lumi’s eyebrows lift.  “Did you have an exam in something?”

“No, I switched history classes to take AP US with my girlfriend.”

Obi-Wan does not echo the disgusted noise Luminara makes in her throat, but he can’t help but agree with it.  It’s not that he objects to Quin having a girlfriend…in theory.  But Asajj Ventress just makes his skin crawl, with her pretension, and her faux-raspy voice, and her endless references to her unbearable band, the Nightsisters, as though anyone who’d ever had the misfortune of listening to them could possibly forget the experience…

“Hey, baby,” she coos, coming to stand beside Quin, her long white fingers predatory on his neck.

Quin leans up to kiss her, and Obi-Wan drops his fork down on his meatloaf, put off the meal altogether.  Tomorrow, he decides, he is going to sit somewhere else, possibly at another school.

“If you’re quite finished,” Luminara interrupts, patting her black-painted lips with her paper napkin and rising from her chair, “I have a bio test to study for.”

Quin unfastens himself from Asajj long enough to fix plaintive dark eye on Obi-Wan.  “Obi-Wan,” he begins.  “My buddy.  My brother.”

The last time an entreaty of Quinlan’s began that way, Obi-Wan spent the night cleaning deer entrails out of the engine of Qui-Gon’s Ford.  

“No,” he says flatly.

“It’s barely a favor,” Quin insists.  “I’m bringing Asajj home for dinner tonight—”

“What?”

“I can hear you, you know,” Asajj informs him, her husky voice sweet.  “I’m standing right here.”

If only Obi-Wan could forget.

“And that’s a pleasure,” he says, “but the kind that’s best in small doses…besides,” he says, kicking Quinlan’s shin under the table, “didn’t Qui-Gon and Tahl say that it wasn’t really a great time to have people over?”

“You call your parents by their first names?” Asajj scoffs, inspecting the sharp ends of her long acrylic nails.  “That is  _so_  pretentious.”

“They’re not my parents,” Obi-Wan says automatically, “and thank you for your concern about my home life—”

“If they don’t know about it in advance, there’s nothing they can do,” Quinlan says cheerfully, digging into Obi-Wan’s meatloaf with Obi-Wan’s fork.  They might both be wolves, but at least Obi-Wan is civilized about it, unlike some people he knows.  “All you have to do is not say anything.  I’m saving you trouble, buddy.”

Across the room, Maul is downing a protein shake and crumpling the container in a fist, to the applause of his entire table.  “That's what I'm gonna do to that mountain lion,” he promises.

That's the real trouble, right there.  

If Quinlan shows up with a stranger without warning, there’ll be trouble, all right…but mostly for Quin.  Obi-Wan might think it’s suicidally stupid to bring outsiders poking around a house full of werewolves, but it’s not his job to reign in Quinlan, is it?  Didn’t Tahl tell him he wasn’t supposed to take on so many responsibilities, in a tiresome speech that somehow implied that he wasn't having enough “fun”?  Watching Luminara murder Asajj over dinner, right in the privacy of his own home, with food provided…that could be fun.

“Just remember,” he tells Quinlan, as though his silence is a weighty favor, given at great personal cost, “you owe me one.”

* * *

“So,” Tahl prompts, looking down the big wooden table at Asajj, in a tone that sounds like she’s parroting a mother she heard once on TV, “Quinlan tells us you have a band.”

True to his word, Obi-Wan got off the bus after school and went straight upstairs to tutor Anakin, whose reading skills were not bad so much as nonexistent.  Lumi came home after field hockey practice and locked herself in her room, to color-code the human genome, or whatever her plans for academic and global domination currently entailed, and Quin got a ride home in Asajj’s used Honda, scratched and dented and covered in bumper sticks advertising her own band.  Obi-Wan had never met Keith Richards, but was fairly certain his car was not covered in Rolling Stones stickers, an observation that was lost in the moment that their arrival happened to coincide with Qui-Gon’s.  

(“You’re Asajj?” Qui-Gon had asked, looking to Obi-Wan, who had come downstairs for just this moment, for help.  “Yes,” Obi-Wan had taken great delight in informing him, “and she’s staying for dinner.”  Qui-Gon had smiled, told her there was plenty for dinner—not that she ate meat, but that revelation was still to come—and disappeared to ‘call my wife about something,’ which Obi-Wan took to mean ‘stake an early claim that this situation was both happening and in no way his fault.’)

“You have a band?” Anakin asks, his mouth full.  “That’s cool.”

Anakin appears to genuinely mean this, and to welcome Asajj’s company; Obi-Wan truly has so much to teach him.

“We’re called the Nightsisters,” Asajj says, casually, as though she is ever talking about anything else.  “We’re a post-punk experimental group focusing on social and political issues.”

Lumi snorts.  At Obi-Wan’s house, someone would have corrected her, but it apparently does not occur to Qui-Gon or Tahl to do so.  Asajj ignores the interruption.  

“What do you play?” Anakin asks.  Obi-Wan has to give credit where credit is due; the kid can’t add, but his social skills might surpass Lumi’s.

“I sing,” she rasps, in a voice that proves she could not possibly.  She turns to Quin.  “Baby, you didn’t tell me you had a little brother.”

Quinlan immediately shoves a forkful in his mouth, gesturing that can’t talk.

Anakin looks between Qui-Gon and Tahl, seated at opposite ends of the table.  “I’m…not?” he guesses.

“Anakin is adopted,” Qui-Gon puts in.  “Recently.”

“Still in process,” Tahl adds.

This would be almost believable, Obi-Wan figures, except for how proud they both look for having invented it.  

“You must really love kids,” Asajj says, looking faintly queasy at the very idea.

“We do,” Qui-Gon answers, just as Tahl says, “Something like that.”

Luminara’s grin widens.  She licks ketchup off her lipsticked lips the way she’d devoured the marrow of a deer she’d downed last full moon.  If Asajj had any sense, she’d look nervous, but she just looks superior.  

“Have you lived in this area long?” Qui-Gon asks Asajj.

Asajj looks genuinely offended.  “No,” she says.  “I’m from New York.”

“State,” Obi-Wan finishes helpfully.  “New York  _state_.”

Asajj glowers.

“That’s a lovely part of the country,” Tahl says.  “We…used to have some family up there.”

“Maybe I know them,” Asajj says.

Lumi laughs, and Tahl pretends not to hear it.  “I doubt it,” she says thoughtfully.  “They live…out in the country.”

“Far out in the country,” Qui-Gon adds.

Quinlan finally finishes chewing.  “They ran away from there when they were our age,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the ends of the table.

“Older,” Tahl says immediately, casting Quinlan a repressive glare over a sharp smile.  “Much older.”

“Only by three years,” Obi-Wan points out; again, purely to be helpful.

Asajj looks, almost, interested in this.  “You ran away together when you were seventeen?  How romantic,” she coos at Quinlan.

“Well, we had to,” Qui-Gon says quickly, trying to short-circuit the idea that is almost tangibly forming between Quinlana and Asajj.  “We didn’t have a choice.  Tahl was supposed to marry someone else the next morning.”

“You ran out on your wedding?” Asajj asks in a normal voice, so absorbed in the subject she forgets to rasp.  “The night before?”

Tahl does not look pleased by the sharing of this revelation, nor by Asajj’s rabid interest.  “I came from a…very traditional family, and there were…certain expectations about my future.”

Asajj finds her rasp again.  “They tried to marry you off at seventeen?”

Tahl pauses, apparently having only realized by the look on her teenage guest’s face that this might, in many circles, be considered strange.  “Well…”

“To a guy with a weird bald spot,” Qui-Gon puts in unnecessarily.

Tahl smiles.  “Nothing touches me more than your feigned jealousy, after twenty years of marriage.”

“I remain deeply resentful of him to this day,” Qui-Gon promises, which is, by Obi-Wan’s reckoning, one of about two entirely true things anyone has said here all evening.

“I’ll have to write a song about this,” Asajj muses.

Once, shortly after his move to Temple, a hunter tracked them back to the house after a full moon, hoping to ambush them in their weaker human state.  Qui-Gon wrestled him to the ground while Tahl grabbed a pair of scissors off the kitchen counter and buried them between his eyebrows.  Qui-Gon had so much blood soaking his face and beard and clothes that he looked like he'd been stabbed himself; Tahl's hands were covered in brain matter, her scissors stuck with bone fragments.  They’d both looked less horrified than they do now.

“Aren't you supposed to write what you know?” Lumi suggests.  

“She does know it,” Quinlan argues.  “She just heard it, and now she knows it.”

“Do you play live?” Qui-Gon interrupts, to Lumi’s groans.

Anakin pulls on Obi-Wan’s sleeve.  “This is more boring than homework,” he whispers.  


	4. New Moon: Anakin

Listening in is wrong, and Anakin knows it, but adults can’t be trusted, and Anakin knows that, too.  He has to learn to look out for himself now, keep his guard up, make sure not to get too comfortable.  He's almost ten, after all, and not a child anymore.  Not since They (he can’t think about his parents, not anymore) put him in the car and kept driving, far away from anything he knew, and then made him get out of the car.  Not since he turned, alone and afraid in unfamiliar woods.  Not since he came to live in a house full of wolves.

(Anakin does not think of himself as a wolf.  Not really.  He’s a person, with something deep and dark inside him, something that is always in danger of escaping.)

He listens, in the twilight darkness of the attic, to the beeps of the dryer finishing a load, and the heavy footsteps and gentle sighs of Qui-Gon emptying towels into a basket.  He waits, and then there are more footsteps, and the creak of a door opening, and the gentle click of it shutting again.

He sneaks downstairs, silently, to crouch outside the closed door of their bedroom.

The bed creaks: Qui-Gon climbing into bed.

“….hear about the mountain lion,” Tahl’s soft voice says.  “The last thing we need is the mountains running with idiots with guns.”

Anakin doesn't know why wolves would be concerned about a mountain lion—there's a whole pack of them, isn't there?—but he keeps listening.  This isn't the thing he's concerned about, anyway.  

….survived hunters before,” Qui-Gon replies.  “We'll survive this.”

“We can't bury a whole posse in our backyard,” Tahl argues.  

“Not without a bigger shovel,” Qui-Gon says, and then there's laughter Anakin doesn't understand.  

“….just as dangerous for them,” Tahl continues.  “…control isn't perfect, somebody could end up dead.”

“At least it would put food on the table,” Qui-Gon replies.  “An extra mouth to feed is a bigger problem than a forest full of hunters.”

Anakin pulls away from the door, his face hot.  He knew it.  He knew he was a problem, he knew he was unwanted…

“….nothing to be done about it, anyway,” Tahl is saying when he creeps closer again.  “He can wear Obi-Wan and Quinlan’s hand-me-downs, that’s something.”

“But whose hand-me-downs will we wear?” Qui-Gon asks.

Tahl’s laughter is rueful.  “You’ll have to learn to tear my clothes off without actually tearing them.”

Qui-Gon’s reply is muffled, too soft for Anakin to catch, and then there is more quiet  laughter.  Anakin doesn’t get the joke.  If they are kicking him out tonight, they are definitely taking their sweet time about it.

“…should move the boys to the attic, though,” Tahl continues at last.  “Lumi can have their old room.  She and Anakin can’t keep sharing, it’s not good for either of them.”

Anakin’s breath catches.  There it is.  He can hear it already, again: he doesn’t belong, he never will, and they have other children to think about.

Should he leave now, tonight?  Grab what he can—food, money—stuff it in his backpack, and disappear into the night?  What if they come after him…should he wait till the full moon, when he’ll be stronger?  But then how, as a wolf, will he carry a bag?  

“His bed is almost finished,” Qui-Gon replies, his voice still muffled, as though his face is pressed into something soft.  “Another day and another coat of varnish…”

Hope blossoms in Anakin’s chest, painfully.  Is it possible—does this mean—

“…still want to have the ceremony tonight, though,” Tahl says.  “New moon is a good time for beginnings.”

“I remember,” Qui-Gon says, and then their voices go silent again.

But Anakin is too busy to wonder what’s preoccupying them; he has to find out what a ceremony is.  

* * *

Obi-Wan frowns, looking up from his homework.  It’s still so hard for Anakin to tell when he’s displeased, or just thinking very hard.  “A ritual performed in commemoration of something,” he says, another word that Anakin doesn’t know.  

“You plannin’ a party, little man?” Quinlan asks from the other side of the small room, stretched out flat on his bed, one earbud still in.  

He could tell them, he could…but he won’t.  He’d have to explain how he knows, admit he was eavesdropping, and he isn’t sure if that’s a crime here or not.  Back at home, the rules were strict, and punishments severe, but at least it was clear.  Here, he is still feeling his way, still watching faces and voices for signs that he has transgressed.  

“I heard it somewhere,” he settles on.

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, and Anakin’s pulse jumps.  He knows…he’s going to be in trouble…

“We need to work on your vocabulary,” is all Obi-Wan says.  “Flashcards, maybe…”

“We need to work on your chill,” Quinlan mutters, putting his earbud back in.

Anakin doesn’t laugh.  Obi-Wan has been so good to him: helping him with his school work, checking in on him, explaining what Anakin thinks of as “wolf stuff” (and therefore Bad in a way that makes Anakin’s stomach hurt) in a way that makes it seem…not okay, not normal, but like someday, it might be.  

He would never want to hurt Obi-Wan’s feelings.

But Obi-Wan just rolls his eyes.  “We can’t all have your cheerful indifference to rational thought,” he says, even though he must know Quinlan can’t hear him.  

Anakin doesn't know quite what that means, but he smiles, anyway.  He wants Obi-Wan to know that if it ever comes to sides here, he will always be on Obi-Wan’s.

Whatever a ceremony is, he hopes that won’t change.

A fist slams against the door.  Anakin jumps, fists already rising to protect himself.  Quinlan doesn’t even take out his earbuds.

Luminara sticks her head in.  “Downstairs, now.”

Obi-Wan sighs and puts down his pencil.  “No one in this house cares about my academic success.”

“You care enough for all of us, buddy,” Quinlan assures him, heaving himself out of bed and stuffing his phone in his pocket.

Anakin files downstairs behind the three, his heart pounding in his chest.  If they turn him out now, where will he go?  If he begs to stay, will it make any difference?

No, he decides, squaring his small shoulders as he follows Obi-Wan through the empty kitchen and out the open door to the backyard.  He won’t beg.  Not this time—

His breath catches.

Candles form a circle in the grass, the flames of white tapers guarding a space just large enough for all six of them.  Tahl stands inside the circle, her back to him, her hands busy with something he can’t make out in the darkness.  Qui-Gon smiles at Anakin as he lights the last wick.  Luminara, usually so impatient, seems calm now, waiting outside the circle, as though she is, at least, where she is supposed to be.  Quinlan, for once, seems fully present, his leg not jiggling, his hands not busy texting Asajj.  Obi-Wan leans closer.  “It’s going to be all right, now, Anakin,” he whispers.  “I promise.”

He wants, so very, very, badly, to believe him.  

Qui-Gon steps into the circle beside Tahl, and beckons.  Luminara steps through first, taking her place beside Tahl, then Obi-Wan, to stand beside Qui-Gon, then Quinlan between Obi-Wan and Lumi, and then—

Tahl holds up a hand before Anakin can move.

He hopes, in the dark, even with their wolf eyes, they can’t see the heat in his face.  He knew, in his bones, that it was all too good to be true, too nice to be his.

“Quinlan,” Tahl says, “why are we here tonight?”

But she doesn’t say it like she wants to know; it must be one of those…one of those r-word questions Obi-Wan tried to explain to him, where you ask because you already know.  

Quinlan apparently does.  “To honor the pack,” he says immediately.

Something about the way Quinlan says pack makes Anakin shiver.  He doesn’t say it the way Anakin would talk about a pack of playing cards; he pronounces the word the way Anakin’s father said God.  

Qui-Gon’s smile is soft as he turns to Luminara.  “And what is the pack?”

“Everything,” she answers, unsmiling, and Anakin shivers again.  “The pack is our lifeblood and our first responsibility, that which sustains us and that which we must sustain.  We die so the pack can live and by living we keep the pack alive.”

They're her words, but they sound like she’s quoting something, something older than any of them.

“Obi-Wan,” Tahl says, her eyes on Anakin, “why are we here tonight?”

Anakin expects Obi-Wan to make a joke, to at least point out that she already asked Quinlan that….but instead, Obi-Wan steps to the edge of the circle, looking right at him.  “To welcome Anakin into the pack,” he says, holding out his hand.

Anakin can’t speak.  

He lets Obi-Wan gently guide him into the circle (“Don’t knock over the candles,” he whispers) to stand in the very middle.  

His smile is so big it hurts his face.  

There is no moon, and so only when Tahl moves directly in front of him do the lights of the candles illuminate the object in her hands: a small silver knife.

He takes a step backward, automatically, bumping into Obi-Wan, who has come to stand behind him.

“It’s all right,” he whispers, his hand firm on Anakin’s shoulder.  “You’re one of us now.”

He could run.  But if they want to kill him, it’s no contest, is it?  There are five of them.  They are faster.  They have the knife.  

Obi-Wan squeezes his shoulder, and Anakin takes a deep breath, and steps forward.

It’s too dark to make out the engraving on the handle of the knife in her hands.  She raises it and gently slides the blade against her hand, making a cut across her palm.  She lifts her hand, the ring on her finger glinting in the candle light, and passes the knife to Qui-Gon.

“Why do we use a knife made of silver, Quin?”

“Because silver is our greatest vulnerability,” he answers, taking the knife from Qiu-Gon and cutting a deep line into his palm, his voice deep and quiet, absent his usual cheerful bravado.  “We use silver to remind ourselves that the bargain we make here tonight is not to be taken lightly, that the pack which is our strength can also be our greatest weakness.”

The knife passes to Luminara, then Obi-Wan, then Anakin.  He hesitates…and then he grips the handle, large in his small hand, and drags it across his palm.  

Qui-Gon takes it from him, still dripping, approval in his blue eyes.  “And now we are one,” he says.  Tahl lifts a candle from the grass and Qui-Gon moves the blade within the flame.  It burns brightly, unnaturally, in the darkness, and then Anakin is beckoned forward to blow it out.

Maybe it’s his imagination, but something feels different, already, even as the candle smokes, the blade bright and clean again.  He never, back in his father’s basement church, felt the presence of the divine the way he feels it now, the sky a moonless dark above, the grass beneath his feet grounding him, cicadas singing a melody that he almost, just now, just tonight, understands.

Quinlan is the first the break the respectful hush.  “Welcome to the family, man,” he says, his big hand tousling Anakin’s hair.

“Just do whatever I do, and ignore whatever Quin does, and you’ll be fine,” Luminara promises.

Anakin looks down at his palm, and is shocked to discover no blood, no cut, no evidence whatsoever of what happened—whatever happened—here tonight.

He looks up to find Obi-Wan watching him.  “I told you it would be all right.”

Across the circle, Qui-Gon and Tahl are putting out candles, hands joined, the smoke gray and curling as it rises towards the sky.  Qui-Gon raises her hand to press her knuckles against his lips, and there is soft laughter between them, as Quinlan pulls his phone out of his pocket and Lumi rolls her eyes…

And maybe, for the first time Anakin can remember, it really is.


End file.
